As my two daughters get older, I am witnessing more helicopter parenting on several different levels. I am not going to lie and say I have never hovered a little too close or cut grapes in half a little too long. You’ll also hear me hollering “Be careful!” more often than not while physically cringing when my daughters decide roller skating down our driveway is a grand idea.
But I let them do it. I let them do most things. And because of that, they have skinned knees. They have bruises. They have scrapes. And I’m totally OK with that. Some parents do not share my same line of thinking, and I get it. My knee-jerk reaction is to tell my daughters to wait until they are bigger, to slow down or to maybe sit this one out. But what good would that do any of us? Would I want someone telling me that now? Or ever? Definitely not. In fact, if someone did, I would scoff and do it harder than I would have done in the first place.
So I let them live and let them play just as my parents did with me. I grew up in the country where my big brother and I spent ALL of our time outside riding four-wheelers, motorcycles and bikes. If we weren’t on those, we were scaling sheds or barns or building tunnels or who knows what. We were doing things that almost always landed us with scrapes and bruises, some of which have left scars that still bring fond memories whenever I see them.
My parents let me live and experience things. They let me be adventurous and free. It’s how I learned to be brave and it’s how I learned to pick myself up, both mentally and physically, when I failed. So if lessons like that come with a few scrapes and bruises, then so be it.
So when you see us on the playground and my rambunctious 2-year-old is getting ready to flail herself off a high ladder, save your passive aggressive comments and judgmental side eye for someone else. Because my 2-year-old? She’ll nail the landing. And if she doesn’t? She’ll do it again until she does. And I’ll let her do it all dang day long.
